This FAQ is meant to list the not so common software you might know about or use for doing things like tethering, stacking, stitching, image transfer or whatever.

Image transfer software:

I use Fast Picture Viewer: http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/ Not only lets you rapidly browse pretty much any image format but is very good at sucking images off a camera connected with PTP through a USB cable. Downside: it leaves the originals on the card so eventually you need to purge it.

Another option is eye.fi. http://uk.eye.fi/ If your camera is supported, gives you wireless transfer from your camera to your computer - and can keep the card from overflowing. Transfer is not as fast a wired connection but does the job. I use it in conjunction with FastPictureviewer

Tethering software

To provide remote control of your camera through a USB connection, often gives you a transfer function as well.

for iPhone: http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/dslr-camera-remote/ This one is a bit puzzling as what it is doing is giving you WiFi control from your iPhone to a computer to which your camera is hardwired, why not just drive it straight from your laptop ?_________________rgds, Andrew

"Is that an accurate dictionary ? Charlie Eppes

Last edited by AndrewC on Sun Nov 21, 2010 8:33 am; edited 1 time in total

Not a lot of people will use video software, but a few do shoot video through their microscopes or have occasion to edit videos. I use Movie Edit Pro, now up to version 17. I've been using this companies software for almost ten years now, and as an amateur, it's all I need. The price is around $60 for the full program and $100 for the plus version which includes the capability of screen capture from your computer monitor. Surprisingly, the software is extremely powerful with a vast array of codex and it can handle virtually any movie, sound or image format available. I would suggest you buy the boxed version, rather than the download, as it comes with a nice thick manual. It does need a modern computer to run it though. Slow and old will clog up.

For stills, I use Photoshop Extended, CS4 now, but CS5 is out. You may already know, this program is probably the worlds best image editor. I have been using Photoshop since 1999, and I am amazed at the power and depth of what it can do. I have come to the conclusion that there is so much it can do that one person cold never master it fully in one lifetime. After 11 years, I am still finding sections in CS4 that I had no idea were there. About two years ago, I discovered that it can build a complete website at the click of a button.

Asisde from all the arcane stuff, it can also edit most companies camera RAW formats in ACR[Adobe Camera RAW], convert them to viewable formats, which can then be opened in CS4 to edit further in a lossless format, before converting to a web usable format like jpg, png or bmp.

The downside is, it's expensive for the first version you buy and you will need a thick manual and a couple years of practice to really get good with it. Just editing RAW's and images is easy though.

Canon supplies tethering software with every EOS camera they sell. Comes free in the box, along with the cables to connect to USB or HDMI. The tethering software is called EOS Utility and it's pretty straight forard to use. Just patch in the cables, turn on the camera and a window pops up to ask what you want to do, like download images off the card, change camera settings or shoot tethered to your computer. Works with both Mac and PC.

DPP[Digital Photo Professional] is for editing the RAW images after they are downloaded to your computer. It's not as powerful as Photoshop, but then, it's not a resource hog either. It won't crash your system to use it. DPP can edit the RAW files in batch, rename them, save to different drives or folders and process them to viewable formats and save them where you want. I have never warmed up to this program, because Photoshop has always done a better job. But as newer cameras with different RAW files come out, Photoshop can't keep up with the changes, and historically, you have needed to upgrade your PS version to edit the RAWs'. Anyone who survived 8 track tapes to cassettes to CD's knows this drill. But, DPP can always edit those RAW's and convert to tiff, which Photshop can open and treat like any RAW files. So that's why I keep DPP installed on my computer.

Edit: I just found out that Kinovea can easily trim videos on Windows PC - I forgot to "lock" the "working zome" previously, which caused my failure to trim videos.

If I only need to trim a video, I use Mac's Realtime Player. My Realtime Player came for free on our Mac (the free Windows version cannot trim video). I do not like to transfer videos to Mac just for trimming though, as I almost always use my Wolindows 8 PC (my wife uses Mac).

I use VSDC Free Video Editor for Windows. It does still capture, video background brightening, sharpening and contrast enhancement. It sort of does trimming, but really leaves a blank/black fragment in placed of the trimmed part - I do not like that and always have to trim with RealPlayer on Mac.

For capturing still photos from a video, I use VLC.

For splitting a whole video into sequence (hundreds) of still photos, I use Kinovea. Its resolution is not very high though.

For basic photo sharpening, contrast enhancement and background brightening, I use FastStone Image Viewer. Gimp is more powerful and like a free Photoshop, though not as as easy to use.

CombineZP does stacking, though it is probably not as powerful as Zerene Stacker or Helicon Focus.

The above-mentioned programs are all free, unless otherwise mentioned.

For photo editing, I also heard about ImageJ, Toupview and Light Zone, though have not used them myself.